School careers and delinquent involvement : a retrospective investigation into the schooling experiences of habitual offenders (original) (raw)
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Criminal careers and life success: new findings from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development
The Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development is a prospective longitudinal survey of the development of offending and antisocial behaviour in 411 males first studied at age 8 in 1961at that time they were all living in a working-class deprived inner-city area of South London. This Findings describes their criminal careers up to age 50, looking at both officially recorded convictions and self-reported offending. It also examines life success up to age 48 based on nine criteria which were also measured on a comparable basis at age 32. The main aims were to investigate the development of offending and antisocial behaviour from age 10 to age 50 and the adult life adjustment of 'persisters', 'desisters' and 'late-onset' offenders at age 48.
Exploring the lifestyles of habitual criminals throws light on the processes of becoming and remaining a criminal, the development of criminal careers and on possible interventions geared towards reversing those careers. This paper draws on narratives of habitual criminals discussing their life stories and shows how the criminal lifestyle is characterised by distinctive behavioural patterns and sustained by a particular ‗habitus'. The lifestyle offers advantages to those who choose to pursue it. The development of commitment to the criminal lifestyle is put forward as an important defining factor of whether young men stop offending as they approach adulthood and the assumption of adult roles, or whether they continue to offend, often with increasing severity, well into their adult years. As a result of commitment, the actor comes to reject alternatives and defines himself according to the behaviour he is consistently engaging in. Once a social identity has been established, rejection of that identity becomes even more difficult. The criminal lifestyle is not only maintained by penalties when the offender attempts to return to conventional living but is also supported by rewards associated with the criminal lifestyle and supported by role identification, specific attitudes, cognitions.
Young Offenders' Perceptions of School: An Ecological Analysis
Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 2009
This study examined the school experiences of 16 adolescent male offenders serving control orders in a maximum-security detention facility administered by the New South Wales Department of Juvenile Justice, Australia. The primary aim was to identify factors in the school setting and family–school mesosystem that promoted the development of their offending behaviours. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with each young offender and recorded on audiocassette. Data were analysed using phenomenological descriptive methodology. Most of the young offenders were predisposed to school failure before they entered the school system. Their family backgrounds placed them at high risk for academic and social difficulties. In most cases these difficulties were evident from early ages. Poor relationships with teachers combined with learning and social difficulties resulted in low motivation to learn. Antisocial school settings promoted aggression and violence. Poor relationships with teachers, antisocial school cultures and ineffective school practices, combined with family conflict and instability and in some cases domestic violence, physical abuse and family criminality, exacerbated academic and social difficulties. Findings suggest the need to deliver interventions to at-risk children (and their families) during their school years in order to enable their development along prosocial trajectories and divert them from offending.
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2021
Life course theory (LCT) diagnoses childhood and adolescent factors that determine anindividual’s involvement in crime in the future. Farrington lists eight key correlates identified byempirical analyses of criminal careers. In this paper, we seek to discuss the inconsistencies with LCTthat we observed in our three empirical studies of the criminal careers of Polish offenders. During12 years of qualitative research, we conducted direct observations and in-depth interviews in juvenilecorrection institutions (21) and prisons (8) across the country. We gained access to incarcerated(102) and released (30) juvenile offenders, as well as to incarcerated (68) and released (28) adultoffenders. We also conducted in-depth interviews (92) with experts working with young and adultoffenders. We similarly accessed some offenders’ criminal records and psychological opinions. Ourstudy revealed the strong presence of family and neighborhood influences on early criminality.Contrary to LCT assumptions, state-dependent institutions (military, work, family) were not strongenough determinants of delinquency. Polish offenders generally experience criminal onset later thanLCT-oriented criminologists indicate. Based on our data, we also agree with the thesis that the onsetof crime should be discussed as different age-related periods rather than just a general onset.
Childhood and Adolescent Predictors of Late Onset Criminal Careers
Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 2008
This study explores the emergence of a criminal career in adulthood. The main hypothesis tested is that late criminal onset (at age 21 or later) is influenced by early factors that delay antisocial manifestations. The Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (CSDD) was used to examine early determinants of criminal behavior. 400 Inner London males were followed from ages 8-10 to 48-50, and were classified as follows: 35 late onsetters who were first convicted at age 21 or later, and did not have high self-reported delinquency at ages 10-14 and 15-18; 129 early onsetters first convicted between ages 10 and 20; and 236 unconvicted males. Odds ratios and logistic regression analyses revealed that the best predictors of late onset offenders compared with early onset offenders included nervousness, having few friends at ages 8-10, and not having sexual intercourse by age 18. The best predictors of late onset offenders compared with nonoffenders included teacher-rated anxiousness at ages 12-14 and high neuroticism at age 16. It is concluded that being nervous and withdrawn protected boys against offending in adolescence but that these protective effects tended to wear off after age 21. These findings show that adult offending can be predicted from childhood, and suggest that early intervention might prevent a variety of maladjustment problems and difficulties in adult life.
Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 2018
There have been few efforts to conceptually and empirically distinguish persistent and chronic offenders, despite the prominence of these concepts in the criminological literature. Research has not yet examined if different childhood risk factors are associated with offenders who have the longest criminal careers (persistent offenders), commit the most offences (chronic offenders), or both (persistent–chronic offenders). We address this gap using data from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development. Poverty, poor school attainment, and family stress had a pervasive impact on all forms of offending in correlational analyses. Longer criminal career durations were associated with fewer childhood risk factors than was the case for chronic offenders. Chronic offenders were significantly more likely than persistent offenders to experience many environmental risks in childhood. When controlling for all other risk factors, hyperactivity and parental separation uniquely predicted persiste...
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2021
Both juvenile and adult criminal careers show regularities in the origins of delinquency, the dynamics of the criminal pathway, and the turning points that lead to desistance/persistence in crime. Research shows that family, education, and friendship environments contribute significantly to the individual choices that create criminal biographies. Our aim was to apply core aspects of life course theory (LCT): trajectory, the aged-graded process, transitions, institutions, and ultimately how desistance/persistence factor into explaining the criminal careers of Polish offenders. The research is based on in-depth interviews (130) carried out with both offenders (90) and experts (40). The offenders were divided into two groups: 30 were juveniles, and 60 were adults of whom half were sentenced for the first time (30) and half were recidivists (30) located in correctional institutions or released. The experts group (40) includes psychologists, educators, social rehabilitators, and prison and juvenile detention personnel working with offenders. We used triangulation of researcher, data, and methodology. Our data revealed that similar biographical experiences characterized by an early socialization, family and friends-based circles laid the groundwork for their entry and continued participation in criminal activity. Juvenile and adult first-time sentenced offenders led criminal careers significantly different from those of recidivists, who faced problems with social adaptation caused by lack of family and institutional support.
Resilience, desistance and delinquent career of adolescent offenders
Journal of Adolescence, 1997
This study examines resilience and desistance from delinquent behaviours and attempts to identify factors which predict persistent or increased or decreased delinquency between adolescence and early childhood. A sample of 363 young people was obtained from the population of five public institutions in 1987 and 1992. Their delinquent trajectories were described on the basis of legal records. These suggested that resilience is a rare phenomenon and is associated with stable relationships, absence of diagnostic label and good adaptation to the institution. Two axes were identified which can be used to describe the population, the family background and the psychological characteristics of the individual. Information which predicted desistance from a delinquent career was identified by means of a stepwise multiple regression. Analyses were conducted separately for each age group to take account of differences in time after the placement. The results indicated that there are important age-related differences in the characteristics which influence desistance or risk. They also show length of stay in an institution to be a predictor. Desistance from further delinquency seems to depend on the time spent in the residential environment associated with an increase of guilt, an improvement of self-image and of attachment to one or more other people.
Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 2009
Using data from the Netherlands-based Criminal Career and Life-course Study the effect of first-time imprisonment between age 18-38 on the conviction rates in the 3 years immediately following the year of the imprisonment was examined. Unadjusted comparisons of those imprisoned and those not imprisoned will be biased because imprisonment is not meted out randomly. Selection processes will tend to make the imprisoned group disproportionately crime prone compared to the not imprisoned group. In this study group-based trajectory modeling was combined with risk set matching to balance a variety of measurable indicators of criminal propensity. Findings indicate that first-time imprisonment is associated with an increase in criminal activity in the 3 years following release. The effect of imprisonment is similar across offence types.